Halad Festival 2006

Last Sunday woke up at about 9am and received a text message from Maning inviting me for a photoshoot in Talisay for their Halad Festival. It’s been awhile since I was last able to shoot so I was pretty excited to join him. I got out of bed and prepared myself. We met up at JY square mall before heading out to Talisay.

We arrived in Talisay city around 11am and had to walk in the SRP to get to their City Hall where the celebration was going to be held. The City Hall was kinda quiet when we arrived. We asked some vendors who were setting up their stalls and learned from them that the parade was not gonna start until 2pm.

It was almost 12 noon and we were hungry from all the walking we did. We decided to have lunch in Gaisano Tabunok and we were in time for the parade when we finished our lunch. We headed to the church where the parade was starting. The dancers of the different contingents were already converging in the church grounds and starting to prepare for the streetdancing.

There were only about 8 or 9 contingents taking part in the streetdancing. From the Church they danced their way to the Talisay City Hall passing by SRP. Each contingent then presented in front of the crowd in the City Hall grounds.

Aside from the dancing there was also an Inasal Parade. Talisay City is known for it’s tasty lechon thus the Inasal Parade. Lechon, in different sizes and costumes were paraded. One that particularly caught my attention was the lechon being paraded in a stretcher with a dextrose. It was pretty hilarious. The emcee of the program commented that there’s no longer any need to worry about getting high blood for eating lechon as now it’s the lechon who’s being hospitalized.

The festival ended with some fireworks. The Halad Festival is not a big celebration like the Sinulog and the organizing committee still needs to do a lot of work to make the festival more organized and interesting in the next coming years. Anyhow what’s important is the reason why the festival is being celebrated which is an offering for St. Theresa de Avila the patron saint of Talisay City.